The Last Stand
by Sidewelter
Summary: AU. Elrac Lightbearer is determined to save his people from seemingly inevitable destruction, but will his enthusiasm lead to his downfall?
1. Devastation

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**Disclaimer: I don't own Blizzard Entertainment or World of Warcraft**

**I would like to thank chemicalmoonlight for testing this story before it was submitted.**

**This is my first fan fic - please review so I can continue to improve my writing. New chapters will be added assoon as possible.**

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Brown smoke enveloped the tops of tall trees like a shroud, stripping the choked trunks of bark with its morbid filth. The ground was barely visible under a vile blanket of ash, crushing the few plants left alive as they struggled for air. A sordid reek filled the air, mocking the world from its shadowy lairs, purging any lingering hope from memories of a glorious era. The rotting, festering stench of death. 

The subdued hush of the dark forest was suddenly pierced by a fit of uncontrollable coughing from the remains of a tumbledown shack by the side of a wide track. Pulling back a piece of ragged canvas from a doorway, a tall figure stumbled into the gloom. The clinking of armour startled the enormous carrion birds from their carcasses as the silhouette began to stagger down the beaten road.

Elrac Lightbearer doubled over in agony as he was attacked once again by endless retching. At one time, the foul toxins that his enemy churned into the air had not the slightest control over his sacred power. At one time, the mindless servants of the Scourge had scattered from the mighty paladins of the Eastern Kingdoms. That time was gone.

Elrac raised his shaking head to gaze sadly at the woodland enveloping him. When he had been a small boy, the same area had been a mass of green, teeming with beautiful flowers and the sweet songs of birds as they glided merrily from tree to tree. But what could be more different to the sight that greeted the paladin's watery eyes? That palette of vibrant colours was now contaminated with the dull solemnity of brown, the iridescent gloss of leaves replaced with the crisp shreds of death.

Sometimes, the paladin wondered if the Light had forsaken its people that once thrived here, fleeing from the embrace of the terrifying plague with the weak. Perhaps his efforts of salvation would prove to be fruitless against such an unstoppable opponent. And yet, when all hope seemed lost, and the poisonous fumes of destruction clouded his heart, he still sensed a faint force, the power of freedom, wrestling with the imposing gloom before it.

At last the man reached his target along the track. There, in front of him, loomed the towering walls of a majestic city. Yes, its once immeasurable strength was gone, its mighty stones crumbled, but its spirit was still worth fighting for. This was the revered emblem of a whole people, no matter how much the foul creatures of the night attempted to corrupt it.

As soon as the first towers of the settlement were thrust out at him through the murk, Elrac's soul ignited with a burning rage. He gripped his fearsome mace with all the infinite fury of a titan as his eyes flashed with anger. This was his home. This was what remained of his once joyous life. This was what he would defend until the inevitable grasp of annihilation curled its decaying fingers around him. The paladin came here often, and the anguish of seeing his nation and the Light ridiculed by the swarms of doom never failed to rekindle his passion for his duty.

With renewed confidence he quickly stepped onto the cobbles of the gateway. He edged quietly towards the battered wooden doors that now enclosed the very menace they had once tried to keep out. He suddenly gritted his teeth with pure contempt as a rattling groan greeted him from the oaken gates. The hideous form of a skeletal hand extended from the gap formed where one gate had twisted away from its hinges, its rotting fingers clutching an ancient dagger corroded with rust. Crying out in pure hatred, Elrac extended his hand and a blinding flash erupted from the gateway, followed by a tormented howl as the bony claw withered into glowing embers.

"You _will_ pay for what you have done to the living!" he yelled in his violent rage, waving his fist blindly at the cracked spire of a cathedral just visible above the outer wall. With that, he burst through the gates, wildly swinging his mace at the mangled corpses that scraped at his armour. Their grinning faces knew nothing of what they were doing or who they were. They were just vermin, vermin to be cut down for the good of Azeroth. Still, as Elrac raised his shield to block the wild slash of a fiend's axe, he couldn't help feeling the tiniest weight of pity on his broad shoulders. The beast standing before him, clothed only in a thin layer of charred and blistered skin, was a real living person once. Perhaps even someone he knew….

The paladin roared frenziedly to clear his mind of the thought as he brought the mace down fiercely on its brittle skull, sending shards of worm-riddled bone scattering through the archway. No, if he thought like that, he would never do anything to free his world. The spirits of the human beings once filling the realm with joy had long been suppressed and abolished from the disintegrated hearts of their possessed bodies.

Not looking back at the heaps of flesh and bone littering the paved pathway into the structure, the paladin stepped out once again into the open air, beholding a great yet terrible scene before him. Across a black stretch of water bubbling with the evils of decay lay the vast city, its great wooden halls reduced to charcoal, its defensive walls now piles of rubble grinding the cobbles away from beneath them. One bridge offered a crossing into the settlement. A grand bridge, still entwined with intricate patterns of loving masons and titanic statues rising up from its foundations, the great warriors of old that made the ultimate sacrifices for the defence of both the northern and this southern kingdom. Their hammers and swords still pointed to the heavens, eternal centurions inspiring the peoples of Azeroth to rise up against any threat overshadowing their realm, however great. Elrac sighed as he knelt in awe of his brethren in arms. This was the Valley of Heroes – the entrance to the ruined stronghold of Stormwind.


	2. An Old Friend

The ever-present fog caught in Elrac's chest as he struggled to quieten his violent wheezing. He stared intently at the shop in front of him to take his mind off the illness that threatened to slowly engulf him. The dark window of the store, encrusted with thick dust, frowned down at him across the abandoned street. It had once been the pride and joy of his father, the delightful toyshop where he carved and painted to his heart's content, chuckling as he thought happily of the tiny children his works would amaze. Now, it was no more that place than a withered skull is the smiling face it once displayed. Silence reigned along that street, its busy life cast down with the shards of glass and wooden beams strewn over its cracked pavements. It would be avenged.

With a thunderous yell Elrac hurled himself from the wall he had crept along and into the main square of the Trade District.

He flicked his fist towards the blood-stained grass curling up between the stone tiles, muttering a blessing breathlessly. Golden flames leapt up into the air to consume the corpses congregated in the centre as they raised their splintering lances in surprise. Amid the hissing and crackling Elrac held up his mace and swung with all his might as a fetid carcass shuffled towards him. The holy weapon glowed with pure energy as it crushed the skeleton's ribs, showering a stream of swollen maggots onto the ground below.

Elrac's fading ears faintly detected the quick tap of bone on the cobbles behind him. As he spun round to face the monstrosity a deafening crack split the air, and the ragged wraith only had time to tilt its abominable eye sockets towards the noise before it was swept away by a white wave. Yelping and snarling, the shape tumbled over and over with its foe. At last, the flurry of fur threw its quarry against a rusting lamppost. Elrac, startled by the ambush, just had time to make out the features of a huge white wolf, its claws and immense fangs yellow with mangled fragments of cartilage and shreds of flesh, before it pounced once again on steel and bone. At once, the paladin sighed as a wave of relief swept through his body. He had not seen that heroic creature for years, and it never wandered alone in the many realms of the plague…

"Cloudmane!" Elrac cried as cheerily as he could, desperately trying to hide his ill health from the deepest recesses of the streets wheeling away from him. The bulk of an aged tauren stepped out from the shadows of a dilapidated house teetering on the edge of the square. The gigantic creature ignored the eager paladin momentarily, leaning out to crush a leathery arm as it wriggled away from a Scourge soldier's smouldering remains. Thoughtfully, the hunter studied the stinking mess below his jet black hoof, and suddenly raised his head as if just hearing his companion's shout. A shiver shot through Elrac's spine like a raging hurricane as he sensed the deep anxiety in the elder's usually emotionless eyes.

"Cloudmane?" he called again, backing away slightly as the tauren strode towards him. Somehow, he sensed that whatever was to be said would fill him with an inescapable dread.

"Young Elrac", he sighed in a slow, weary tone like the ancient breath of the winds. "I see you are still alive after all this time. But only just alive…" he paused as he scanned the body of the familiar human before him. Or perhaps not that familiar. The holy warrior should still have looked youthful in his late twenties, yet the unimaginable atrocities he had suffered, the pain he had endured, seemed to have eroded his physique like the persistent tides wear away seemingly invincible rock.

The paladin rapidly tried to progress the conversation, partly due to his wavering denial of his deterioration, but also through great concern for his friend.

"But what of you, Cloudmane? I've thought of you as dead for years! I've thought of many as dead for years!" He lunged forward to grasp the shoulder of the being in front of him as if his bewildered mind failed to register this seemingly impossible presence.

The tauren shook his head sadly as he stared at his rifle, flicking his tail in an unmistakable sign of agitation. "You are half right there, my friend," he whispered as if in a daze, staring ahead as if collecting a jigsaw of distant events into some sort of sensible account. He was no longer standing in the forlorn Southern Kingdom, but whisked away to horrors of the terrible bastions of evil, the malevolent schemes lurking deep in the mortuaries of Ironforge, the scrabbling swarms of the damned clawing down the beautiful terraces of Thelsamar…

"I've been…on a visit to the north…" he mumbled more slowly than ever, snapping back to the present.

Elrac nervously bit his tongue to restrain the torrent of fear coursing through his veins. "And? What of the Dwarven resistance? The Argent Dawn's barricade at Blackrock Pass?" He almost choked with dismay as Cloudmane shrugged wearily.

"Nothing. If there's anyone north of us now, they are pitifully few in number and could not possibly hold out for much longer…" He broke off to study Elrac's trembling face, trying to reach the deepest fathoms of his brain to deliver his unwelcome news in the best way possible. "If we are not quick, we will be completely surrounded and soon join the ranks of the Scourge. We've done our duty here. It's time…" He sighed deeply, tired of avoiding the woeful topic. "…Time to abandon our posts here and retreat to Orgrimmar. You know it is the only possible course of action left. Do you understand what I am saying?" He peered, puzzled, at the human's toneless face.

Oh, yes. The paladin knew exactly what was being said. If he had not focused his entire energy into preventing his muscles from springing into action, he would have murdered the tauren on the spot. _Murder? _What was he becoming?

The placid face suddenly contorted into a horrible grimace as the man whirled round to turn his back on the so-called friend. Al his life he had valiantly fought for the freedom of his people, and this pathetic creature wanted him to forget everything? The losses? The sacrafice? The pain he had suffered? "Go on then!" he roared, his features burning red as blood rushed to his extremities as he gestured wildly about him. "Run away! Run away with the cowards of this beautiful land! Break your oaths to defend this continent! As for me…" He smugly pointed at his chest and began to wander off towards the sounds of moaning he heard drifting from a burning plaza somewhere nearby. "_I _have a city to defend."

The aged hunter smiled sadly as he whistled for his wolf to return from its prowling. "A city to defend? Looks like you are too late…" he muttered to himself under his breath. He swung his mournful head side to side, taking in the debris reaching out towards him from the twisted wreckage of what was truly a battleground. This city had once offered a formidable refuge against the Lich's macabre powers. Now, nothing was safe from the ominous mask of undeath.

Slowly, he turned to gaze at Elrac as the warrior's legs began to shudder, rattling his plate leggings in an eerie jig.

His head swimming, his vision blurred, his hands numb, Elrac heaved his body forward with the last of his energy, and, with a feeble gasp for air, toppled headlong onto the ground with a violent clatter.


End file.
